Civic Advocacy Support Program

Situation
In September 1991, Armenians chose independence by voting overwhelmingly against a referendum for the retention of a reformed Soviet Union. A presidential election followed in October 1991 that gave 83% of the vote to the candidate of the Armenian National Movement, defeating the Communist party. As a result of the May 2007 parliamentary elections and the decision to form a governing collations, 113 out of 131 seats in the national Assembly are held by pro-government parties. (U.S. Department of State)

In Soviet times, the concepts of civil society and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were completely distorted. NGOs were state financed and were used by the communist party as indirect leverages to control the society. Even after the collapse of the soviet regime, some of those NGOs have continued their existence in the same form as before.

What We Did
The goal of the Civic Advocacy Support Program (CASP), a USAID-funded program implemented by Counterpart International, was to strengthen the organizational and performance capacity of three Intermediary Service Organizations (ISOs) and six core advocacy partner Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs). Counterpart worked with these nine organizations to develop strategies for long-term organizational sustainability and a more diversified funding base.

The three objectives of CASP were:

• ISO development– to build the institutional capacity of three Armenian ISOs to provide grants, training, and technical assistance to Armenian NGOs;
• Core advocacy NGO development – to build the organizational and advocacy capacity of six national-level Armenian NGOs to fulfill their advocacy missions; and
• Advocacy skills building for Marz (provinces) and local level NGOs– to strengthen the capacity of a broad-based group of Armenian NGOs to better analyze and articulate the needs of beneficiaries, and to build their constituencies for achieving policy reform through their action-based advocacy.

Counterpart's integrated approach to developing and promoting civil society in Armenia took into account the large number of foreign donor organizations and donor-assisted initiatives by Armenian groups. Counterpart's coordination and information sharing activities underscored the importance of synergistic partnerships and aim to avoid duplication in donor program implementation.

Impacts
With the conclusion of Counterpart’s fifth year of CASP in Armenia, many activities that started five years ago have come to fruition. Several milestones had been reached:

• Counterpart managed an election initiative related to the 2007 Parliamentary and 2008 Presidential elections. We supported civil society organizations (CSOs) in promoting open, non-partisan election-specific initiatives that increase public participation, voter awareness and transparency. A small grants faculty supported NGOs in their 'Get Out the Vote' and 'Voter Rights Awareness' activities.
• The three Counterpart-supported ISOs have received full and partial certification;
• Counterpart’s Trainers Group, which began in 2007, resulted in certification of 18 master trainers; and
• Core Advocacy Institutional Grantees concluded their advocacy campaign and documented their many successes.

With these milestones reached, Counterpart’s team in Armenia continues working on several new and ongoing activities that promise to yield important results.